


Glory Days

by inbox



Series: Psychic Load [10]
Category: Cable (Comics), Punisher (Comics)
Genre: Exhaustion, M/M, Meet the Family, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:21:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21672877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/pseuds/inbox
Summary: He barely raises his hand to knock on Cable's door before it opens away from him and he’s left swinging at nothing but air.“I could hear you coming up the stairs, Frank,” says the teenage girl behind the door, head cricked to the side to hold a phone between her cheek and her shoulder. She's got a shock of red hair knotted up in a messy bun, nails bitten back short. “You gotta learn to turn the mental volume down. You were thinking so loud it blocked out my movie.”Frank, meet Hope. Hope, meet Frank.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Nathan Summers
Series: Psychic Load [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1367605
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38





	Glory Days

Common sense would've been to take a right turn and take the back roads south until he couldn't keep his eyes open, and parked up somewhere to grab a nap then keep driving. Common sense would’ve been to press onwards to his home turf as quickly as possible to repack and rearm and recharge.

Frank’s slept in his van plenty of times, under bridges and parked up in woodlands. Slept under his van when it's hot, slept upright in the driver’s seat fully dressed under the crinkly chorus of a space blanket when it's cold. He could've taken a power nap and kept going until he hit the ass-end of the Poconos, all the way to a non-descript gate that led to a non-descript brown shed door inset into a rock wall, next to a non-descript patch of scrubby wood. After that it was only an unmarked mile hike to his cabin, a spot off the grid to lay low and lick his wounds and recuperate. 

Common sense would’ve been to not let his job get out of control in the first place, but shit happens. Intel expands. Chance meetings happen. The opportunity to wipe out an entire arm of the Korablin family got dropped into his lap, and who is Frank to turn down such a generous gift from fate?

Common sense. Bullshit. He's Frank Castle, a prize idiot who hasn’t got a lick of common sense when he's tired, and right now he's so goddamn tired he can barely keep his eyes open. 

The interstate sign to Rochester is _right there,_ reflecting brilliant and bright in his headlights. Muscle memory makes him take the turnoff, muscle memory takes him across town to a plain six pack apartment block, and muscle memory punches in the key code to the underground car park. 

S’good thing Cable doesn't own a car, ‘cause he sure has a lot of shit stashed in his car space. The van bumper kisses up against a wall of plastic storage crates that look full of sunshine yellow belts and little else, lit up in his headlights like a monument to decades of poor colour coordination. 

Frank slumps over the wheel, forehead resting against the worn vinyl between his fists. It has been, he thinks to himself, a real asshole of a week. 

It's only three flights of stairs. He can manage that. He's only been awake for days on end, one crisis after another. He hasn't passed out yet. Three flights is nothing. 

He realises he doesn't have a key right as he's standing in front of Cable’s door, top floor on the left. Nearly every time he's been here he's arrived by Cable's bodyslide tech, and the one time they stumbled up the stairs Cable had waved a hand in the direction of the door and didn't interrupt working a deep dark mark onto Frank's neck for even a second. 

He wouldn't have planned to carry a key with him even if he had one; stupid behaviour on a job, carrying around anything that might tie him to other people, but just ‘cause he _can_ pick the locks on Cable's doesn't mean he _wants_ to pick the locks on Cable's door. Some long-buried bit of Frank that still clings onto useless echoes of polite society is insistent that breaking into Cable’s house is a bad idea, and for once he's inclined to listen to it. 

There are lights on at least, the ugly curtains by the door backlit by changing colour. TV is on. Cable’s gotta be home. Frank can apologise for treating Cable’s place like a bleed-out flop in the morning, but right now all he can think about is a hot shower and the blue daisy print towel that's his by default and the hedonistic indulgence of falling asleep on the massive soft slab that Cable calls a bed. 

He barely raises his hand to knock on Cable's door before the door opens away from him and he’s left swinging at nothing but air.

“I could hear you coming up the stairs, Frank,” says the teenage girl behind the door, head cricked to the side to hold a phone between her cheek and her shoulder. She's got a shock of red hair knotted up in a messy bun, nails bitten back short. “You gotta learn to turn the mental volume down. You were thinking so loud it blocked out my movie.”

“Uh,” he says, dimly aware that the only thing he's been thinking about for the past laborious five minutes it took to drag himself up three flights of stairs was _one more step_ chanted over and over again like a hymnal refrain, intercut with wild fantasies about eating a fistful of painkillers while Cable forced his knuckles deep into the mess of knots locking up Frank’s lower back. 

Frank carefully looks at the apartment number on the door again. Apartment 3B in tarnished brass letters, old enough to leak a stain into the inoffensive beige paint. He looks back at his interrogator. “I've got the wrong place…?”

“One sec.” She scratches at her pajama pants - neon orange camo print, he notes, with ice cream cones - and squints at him critically. “I think he's got a concussion. Unless he's always like this,” she says, and laughs at whatever answer she gets over the phone. “Hey Frank, did you get hit in the head?” 

He nods mutely, then catches himself. “Hey. I, uh. I definitely have the wrong place.” He hasn't got any heat on him ‘cept a boot knife. How did she know his name? Who the fuck is she? Frank takes a step back on the landing, ready to take the steps as fast as his shaky legs might allow. 

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes, I'll ask him.” She holds up a finger and Frank stops, uncertain. How old is she? Young enough that he's gonna feel real conflicted about killing her if this is some set-up to take him out.

She rolls her eyes. “Nathan wants to know if you want lamb korma or the fish tikka masala. He's getting takeout from that Indian place you apparently like.”

“Uh.” His overworked brain latches onto the easiest thing to understand about the past two minutes of conversation. He _does_ like the fish curry at Royal Palace. 

“He wants the fish,” she says to the phone. “Don't forget the saag paneer this time. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, he's still standing on the doormat. Sure. Uh-huh. Don't worry, I won't let him die before you get back.” She steps back and gestures into the apartment, palm up. “Dad says to stop bleeding on the steps, it makes the neighbors upset.”

“I'm not--” Frank stops and checks himself, one long breath in through his nose, marshalling his thoughts. Behind her Frank can see the same fat overstuffed brown leather couch and the same soft knitted grey blanket he's fallen asleep on more than once, the same ugly blue rug that burns Frank's knees raw every time he gets the bright idea to sit up and beg for Cable to fuck his mouth. The photos on the wall look the same, every snapshot a kaleidoscope of sunshine yellow and royal blue. It looks like Cable's apartment, but… “Who lives here?” 

The young woman levels him an unimpressed look as she shoves the phone in her pajama pants pocket. “You're the one who's knocking. You tell me.”

Christ almighty. He needs to leave before his head starts banging like a drum. He's had the precursor to a migraine brewing low and threatening for the past few hours, and this might be the thing to tip it over. “Sorry for bothering you,” he says, digging into some half-forgotten reserves of social niceties to make himself sound as polite as possible. “I thought my friend lived here. Must've moved out."

“Oaths sake, Frank,” she says. “Nathan - Cable - is out getting dinner. Come in before you pass out.” 

Common sense says to get back to his van and circle the block and call Cable. Common sense says even a teenage girl could kick his ass in this state. 

Common sense. Bull-fucking-shit. 

Frank turns sideways to sidle past her, still wary, and she very politely tries not to make a face as she catches a full-gust lungful of old sweat and crusted plasma and stale adrenaline and burnt plastic and singed hair and every other foul stink that's clinging to his skin and embedded in his clothes. 

“Dad will be about twenty minutes,” she says. “You've got plenty of time to have a shower.”

“Thanks,” Frank mutters, dropping his keys on the hallway table, left of the dish that's constantly filled with the ebb and tide of Cable’s pocket crap. He always leaves his keys in the same place, always dropped the same way, so he can book it to the exit as fast as possible. Then, mental gears slowly turning, he looks at her sharply. “Dad?”

“Yeah,” she says simply, already more interested in the tv than the complete stranger staring at her. On the screen two cops are wrestling a swan. “Nathan’s my dad. I'm Hope, by the way.”

“Frank,” says Frank, mouth running on autopilot. _Hope? Who the hell is Hope?_

“Uh-huh,” she says, and turns the volume up slightly. “You know where the bathroom is.”

He leans against the hall table to pick at his boot laces. They’re so full of shit, gone solid with ash and mud and god knows what else they've absorbed over the past few days, that he gives up at trying to pick the knots and uses his boot knife to cut the laces out. The girl - Hope, his mind supplies, apparently Cable’s daughter Hope - watches him with her chin propped on her hand, clearly finding him more entertaining than the movie. 

“You should get zip sided boots,” she says, watching him fumble with the knife tip. “Better in an emergency.”

“How d’you figure?” He pulls the laces free from one boot and starts on the other. “This is gonna stink.”

“You already stink. If you break your ankle it’s better to have zip sides instead of laces. Less trauma on the break ‘specially if you’ve broken through your skin. You know. Getting your boot off.”

“Yeah?” Frank decides to take the path of least resistance and ball up his socks deep in his boots. Easier to hide the smell. Easier to throw out later if Cable’s kitchen bin is nearly ready to be emptied.

“Yep. The bin is full, by the way. Do your thing with your biohazards.”

He frowns at her. _Are you…?_

“Yep,” she says again, turning her attention back to the tv. “Just like Dad.”

“Great,” he mutters. “So there’s two of you.”

Hope laughs and points at him, finger-gun style. “Like father, like daughter. Matched set. You want a drink?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, getting to her feet with the kind of youthful agility Frank hasn’t had in decades.

“He didn’t mention you,” Frank blurts out as he follows her into the kitchen, already grimacing internally as the words leave his mouth. He’s not great with teenagers. Never had the knack for talking to them. Kids, fine, he loves kids, kids seem to never be phased by him. Adults, he’s good at scaring the everloving shit out of adults. Teenagers, though… teenagers are a closed book to him, 'specially the ones who can read _him_ like a book.

Hope shrugs and passes him the jug of orange juice over the fridge door. “S’fair.”

“Wouldn’t have interrogated you at the door if I’d known.”

She gets a couple of cold glasses from out of the fridge and takes the orange juice from him, pouring until each glass is brimming to the lip. “I think you were about to pass out on the doormat, but sure. You interrogated me.”

They sit in silence at the kitchen table for a long minute. Frank’s thirstier than he thought; he polishes off the first glass in long gulping swallows and Hope tops him off again before he drains that too. “I’m good,” he says as she goes to pour him a third. “Thanks. I’m good.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, ignoring his protest and pouring out another glass out anyway. “Now you can't tell Dad I wasn’t a gracious host.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He rubs at the stubble on his chin and closes his eyes for a second. He could easily fall asleep right here if he wasn’t careful, and he jerks himself upright as he feels his chin start to sink towards his chest, out of his control.

“You need a first aid kit?” 

“I'm good.”

“Uh-huh.” She squints at him over the rim of her glass. 

“Really,” he says. “Nothing that can't keep until I have that shower.”

“Sooner rather than later,” she says, and laughs at the scowl on his face. “So he really didn't mention me, huh?”

Frank shakes his head. “Not that I asked. We don't exactly stop to swap family stories in our line of work.”

The look Hope gives him is slightly too shrewd for Frank's liking. “Right,” she says eventually before chugging half her juice. “Dad loves to compartmentalise. Work stuff, family stuff.” She pauses, considering. “D’you know anything about our family… stuff?” 

“Nope,” he says honestly. “Don't know, mostly don't care. Mutants, capes… I don't do that circus. No offence.”

“Wow,” she says, sitting back her chair and regarding him with over-played disbelief. “ _Wow_. No wonder Dad likes you. You're ruder than he is.”

“Thanks.” Frank looks back at the hallway again, the walls covered in photos that show a riot of ocean blue and sunshine yellow. “I've been here a few times. You live elsewhere? With your mom?”

“With my foster family.” She waves her hand, cutting Frank's awkward noise off at the pass. “Not like that. I go to a regular high school. Living with a regular family helps to keep a schedule. Dad is too chaotic to live with and still get to class on time, y’know?”

Frank says _yeah_ , internally trying to wrap his mind around Cable, the biggest bulwark of unflappable bedrock in Frank's admittedly small social circle, ever being described as chaotic. 

“He doesn't exactly work a regular job or keep regular hours,” Hope says. “And, y’know, I want to pass AP Calc and it's hard to keep a study schedule when Dad keeps disappearing off to 4000AD or whatever. I've had enough of chaos for a while. You should ask him sometime for the backstory.”

“Sure.” Frank examines that statement and immediately files it into his ‘too hard’ mental folder, right alongside pretty much everything else to do with Cable that fell outside of the purview of ‘fighting’ or ‘fucking’. Maybe one day. Definitely not today. Definitely not tomorrow. 

“Hey,” he says. “How did you kn--”

“Told you. You think at maximum volume. I could hear you from the driveway.” Hope shrugs. “Most burglars don't think about making out with my dad - vom, by the way - so I called him while you were having a breakdown on the stairs.”

“Oh,” Frank says. “Well. Shit.”

“Yeah. Well shit. Wait, oh, _shit,”_ Hope says, snapping her fingers. “I forgot. Keys. You've got your gear in the van?”

“Van’s armed,” he says, rubbing at his eyes. “No one's gonna get in.”

Hope raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Dad’s rules. No weapons outside. Leaving armaments around makes the neighbours nervous. Can I--” she raps her temple, just like her old man. “--borrow the security stuff from you? I won't scratch the paint, promise.”

“On the van or my brain?”

“Yep,” she says with a smirk. For the first time he can properly see shades of Cable in her face, in the way she’s grinning at him, left corner of her lip curled higher than the right.

The touch of pressure against the base of his skull makes him twitch. The feel of Hope pushing up against his brain feels completely different to Cable, an unknown foreign presence skimming over the top of his thoughts. Cable in his head is a known comforting presence, big and solid and rounded at the edges. Hope feels like quicksilver running over the ridges and folds of his brain, fast and nimble and light-footed. His vision blurs ‘round the edges a little and she says _whoops_ in his head before she course-corrects herself. 

“Just show me,” she says after an awkward moment. “Push it to the front. I don’t wanna go digging around in your head. It feels like it’s messy in there. Uh, no offence.”

“None taken.”

He shows her the van, careful to keep his thoughts shaped carefully around the security gear and not anything else to do with his ride. Not the things he's done in that van, the brutal acts he's committed from that van. Definitely not the things Frank's done to Cable in that van, cramped up on the floor in the back, sweaty and grimy and too impatient to delay getting his hands on Summers’ big broad body until they got somewhere more spacious and comfortable.

Judging by the grossed out on Hope's face, he's doing a really bad job of staying on focus. 

“You are,” she says. “Don't be nasty.”

Frank thinks about the IFF on his keys, the hidden thumb-switch under the handle on the driver’s side to deactivate an electric circuit that would otherwise blow someone of Hope’s size clear across the garage. The gym bag of guns in the back, a Morton’s Grocery bag dropped into a netting sling on the left-hand side that needs to come up too. _Intel_ , he supplies in his mind. _Private. Don’t read it._

“Like I would.”

“I don’t know you,” Frank reminds her. Is he being rude? Do teenagers know rudeness when they hear it? He wouldn't normally give a shit, but he's pretty sure Cable will have a few choice words to say about it if he was irrevocably fucking up this first impression. 

“And I don’t know you but I still let you into my house while Dad is out and gave you orange juice, so let’s not throw stones here.” Hope gets to her feet and slaps him on the shoulder, just shy of the spot where wearing a body armor vest for three days straight has rubbed his shoulder blade raw. “I’ll have your guns up in a sec, safe and sound.”

“Thanks,” he says gruffly. “The bag is gonna be heavy. Don’t strain yourself.”

“I’ll try not to,” says Hope lightly, just as his fouled socks come floating into the kitchen to drop into the bin full of banana peels and discarded takeout chicken boxes. She lifts out the bag with a gag of distaste and ties the top closed, and nods at the doors under the sink for good measure. “Fresh bags are in there, towels are in the cupboard in the hallway. Like I said, _plenty_ of time to have a shower before Dad gets back.”

“Hey, uh.” Frank scratches the back of his neck. “About your dad and me.”

“Yuck, says Hope, crossing to the hallway. “Gross.” She winks at him as she stomps her feet into a pair of wool lined boots, her neon pajama pants bunching up around the tops. 

“Okay,” he says holding up his hands in defeat. He sees the iceberg looming in that sentence, that he makes Cable happy, and wisely chooses to navigate well clear of it. “We just work together. Just that.”

Hope shakes her head, tsk-ing loudly. “You’re a bad liar.”

“Maybe,” he says, wondering why he’s even attempting to argue with a teenager. “I’m just. Y’know. This isn’t what I was expecting. You’re his--”

“Making my Dad happy? Vom.” She holds up the rubbish bag one-handed and mimes sticking her fingers in her mouth with the other. “Barf. Gross.”

“Okay, jesus. I won't bring it up.”

“Disgusting,” she calls out from the door. “Gross!”

“You already said gross.”

“Foul!” The front door closes before he can come up with something funny to say. He settles for drinking his orange juice, feeling the sugar rush roaring through his system as he thinks hard about finding the energy to make it into the shower. 

Frank has intentions of taking Hope’s pointed advice to wash up. She’s not lying. He really does stink. He changes the garbage bag out as instructed and gets as far as taking his towel - the sky blue one with daisy print, one hem starting to come undone from use, _his_ towel - from the cupboard and sitting on the edge of Cable’s bed to undo his belt. He closes his eyes for a moment, breathes in deep. 

The room smells like Cable. His slept-in bedsheets, a note of faded Bengay liniment, Cable’s cologne hanging faint in the air. It smells so fucking good that he impulsively sucks back a huge lungful, and another, and another until his ribs hurt and his head aches and he needs to close his eyes for a second. 

Even the pillow smells great when he drops his face into it; soft and worn-in and on the cusp of needing changing. Smells good. Smells like home. Frank vows to only keep his eyes closed for a second. Just a second. Just one restful second for the first time in days, free to indulge in whatever pathetic domestic daydream he’s gonna tote around for days after this; a whole fresh fantasy of life outside his own self-imposed war, ready to break down into survival rations to last another week, another month.

 _Stupid,_ he tells himself. _Dumb as dogshit._

He’s asleep before he knows it, passed out dead to the world with his belt pulled through half its loops. 

* * *

Frank starts as the mattress dips by his legs. He surges upright, fists clenched and forearms braced deflect and strike, his heart thumping against his rib cage as he stares wildly around the room. 

“None of that,” Cable says firmly. The back of Frank's brain tickles as Cable slides into his head, carefully edging his way through the choppy mess of Frank's half-awake mind ‘til he can project a gentle aura of calm cool static.

“Hey stranger.”

“Hey,” Frank croaks, sinking back onto the mattress. His throat feels dry and tight. 

Cable slides up closes to Frank, allows a considerate pause for Frank to push him back before he gets comfortable on the edge of the bed, his knee folded up under himself. Cable’s dud eye glows soft in the dimly lit room and phantom hands tenderly stroke at Frank's hair and rub at his scalp ‘til the fight bleeds out of him and he relaxes in increments. 

“What am I gonna do with you, Castle,” he says softly, and stoops to brush his lips to Frank's temple in a dry kiss, sweet and unexpected. “You smell like hell.”

“So your daughter tells me.” Frank rubs the scratchy sleep from his eyes and stares at the mess on Cable's bedside table, trying to focus and drive back the start of a migraine he can see developing in the corner of his eye. “Hope, huh?”

“Her mother's name.” Cable rests his hand on Frank's hip, rubbing slow circles over the hard knob of bone. “I wasn't hiding her from you.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I get it. Some things you gotta protect.”

Cable makes an agreeable noise. “That's it. Some things are precious.” He pauses, considering. “She could beat me single handed though, so maybe that's not the right word.”

Frank chuckles weakly. “Nah, you were right the first time.” He reaches down to squeeze Cable's hand. “I get it. Not the kind of thing I'd bring up to me either.”

Cable's hand stills on his hip for a long beat before he sighs and gets off the bed.

For an ugly moment Frank thinks he’s gonna tell him to fuck off and get out. Tell him to mind his shit, that he's a moron for dragging his fucked up life into Cable’s little den of normalcy. Instead he circles ‘round the bed and climbs on from the other side, dragging Frank back against him and wrapping his thick arm ‘round Frank's chest and holding him close. 

For a second Frank almost, _almost_ , gives in to the urge to tell Cable everything. That he knows what all of this is like; that he knows the constant churning terror of being a father, that he hopes to god that Cable never knows anything like the dead-eyed horror of never being able to forget for a single fucking second that his children were brutally taken away from him. 

That he knows why Cable might hold someone as important as Hope back from someone like Frank, someone who even the most fair-minded would describe as unstable and unsteady. 

He knows, jesus christ, how he knows. If him then, Frank from before Frank stopped living, met him now, it sure as shit wouldn’t be a happy meeting, and he _is_ him. 

Cable sighs again, his breath tickling the fine hair at the nape of Frank’s neck, and pulls him closer again. They lay together pressed tight from neck to knee until Frank’s breath hitches and his chest feels like it’s slowly collapsing on itself and the urge to claw himself free builds like a sour taste in his throat.

“Go clean up. Have a shower,” Cable says, setting him free and rolling onto his back with a grunt. “I got you the fish tikka masala and a stack of garlic naan, and Hope has only eaten half of it. If you hurry she might leave some crumbs behind. You need to eat something before I can get stuck into that brain ache you're nursing.”

“Take care of your arm,” says Frank before he can think better of it. “That's a better use of your time.”

There's a pause that hangs in the air a heartbeat too long before Cable laughs and slaps light at Frank's hip. “Don't even try it,” he says, flexing his arm wrist in, then wrist out. His metal skin shines lustrous, each dip and swell of muscle catching the hallway light. “I'm good as new. You won't make my top ten when it comes to nagging me about the TO infection, Frank. Not even close.”

“‘Morning and night, even when I sleep,’” quotes Frank. He awkwardly forces himself upright on the edge of the bed, toes digging into the knotted rag rug as his entire back locks up under the strain, muscles rippling and pinching as knots settle into knots into knots. “I don't need you to nursemaid me, Summers. I'm fine.”

“So why are you here?”

Frank opens his mouth to snap back a defensive reply but, for once, thinks better of it. “I didn't know you'd be here,” he says lamely instead. “I saw the Rochester turnoff on the interstate and thought…”

“You'd make a social call?”

“I didn't have a plan,” he says pissily. “I wanted to see you. I'm tired and run down and I'm busted up and I wanted to see you.” Frank scowls over his shoulder at Cable. “Go on. Laugh it up.”

“Maybe later,” says Cable, teasing. “I'll save it for tomorrow.”

“I'll get out of your hair by dawn,” Frank says, hoping to god he doesn't sound even a fraction as miserable as the way he feels. 

“Bright fucking Lady, Castle,” says Cable. “You're a pain in the ass, you know that? Stay. I’m glad you're here, I want you to stay. You want me tie you down so you've have no choice?”

Frank thinks about that for a hot second then wrenches his brain elsewhere, trying to thwart the heat threatening to flood his face and trickle down his spine and pool in his belly. 

_Hold that thought,_ says Cable, his words blooming up gratifyingly hot in Frank's thoughts. A picture briefly flashes behind his eyes; Frank, naked, wrists and ankles tied with delicate green ribbons, strips of pretty fabric too thin and useless to keep him down if he didn't want to stay down. No, not ribbons. Vines. In Cable’s imagination Frank is well-fucked and flushed under a canopy of Krakoan green, picked out in silhouette by a bright harvest moon hanging over an endless ocean. In Cable's fantasy Frank watches him, eyes sleepy and his mouth red, his hips tilted up in invitation as delicate questing leaves stroke at his wrists and press at his lips, anticipated and excited.

 _My pretty wife,_ Cable breathes in his head, before the picture is snatched away from Frank with only a lingering heat of self consciousness left behind. “Later,” he says out loud. “Shower. Eat. Stop that headache before it gears up.” Cable ticks these off on his fingers as he talks, a general laying out his battle plan. 

“I told you, don't worry about me,” says Frank gruffly. He grits his teeth and gets to his feet, back howling at the strain. He chokes down his grunt of pain. “Shouldn't you be with your daughter?”

Cable snorts. “Hope is 17, Frank. She's fine. She's glad I'm not talking over her movie.”

“Huh.” He stiffly strips his shirt and drops his filthy trousers to the floor, mindful of the open bedroom door.

Cable steps up behind him and rests his hand on Frank’s shoulder, well clear of the rubbed raw welt weeping on Frank’s shoulder blade. Frank can feel him slide back into his brain, unobtrusive and quiet, waiting for Frank to work through the urge to step away. 

_Good man,_ says Cable approvingly, and Frank doesn’t bother to hide the animal thrill that ripples through him at those words. Good man, Frank. Good dog for not shying away. Sit, fetch. Heel, Frank. 

_Good man for coming to see me,_ says Cable firmly. _Good man for thinking of coming here._ He turns Frank around and looks at him seriously, close enough that Frank has to look up at him. His dud eye glows golden warm in the soft hallway light, and Frank silently acquiesces to Cable picking through his memories of the past few days. It's not the job that he's interested in beyond a cursory examination of the hit, double checking if the three carloads of Russians were on any of Cable's personal shitlists. No, Cable mostly looks at Frank himself. The injuries he took, all small but debilitating as a whole. The lack of good sleep. Frank’s intake of cheap protein bars and Rip-Its pounded down room temperature warm, then the antacids he poured into his mouth from the tube. Cable clicks his tongue disapprovingly at the way Frank had slumped over the steering wheel when he parked, and how long it took him to climb just three flights of stairs. 

“I'll save the lecture.”

Frank can't dig up the energy to even roll his eyes. “I don't--”

“You're an asset,” says Cable, cutting him off. He steps back to look at Frank critically, top to bottom. He's come through the week in more-or-less good nick, save a few cuts and scrapes and some heavy bruises, but Cable’s lips are set in a thin line that makes a small stupid bit of Frank cower on itself like a dog with his tail between his legs. “Like I've said before, think of yourself as a tool if that helps. You're my property to keep in good condition, Frank.” 

A light touch settles on Frank's shoulders, pressing light down his collarbone, sweeping over his pecs. 

“I came here,” says Frank. He doesn't recognise his own voice, tired and small. 

He closes his eyes as the touch lingers over his flanks, presses firm against the mess of knots snarling up his lower back. Frank spreads his legs a little, falls into parade rest, and can't hide the way his breathing hitches as the gentle pressure cups his ass and smooths down his inner thighs. 

“Yes, you did,” says Cable approvingly. “But like I said, I'm saving the lecture for tomorrow. Because I'm nice.”

He steps back into Frank’s space and cups his face with both hands, flesh and metal. Cool static flows into Frank’s head, a crisp breeze that blows away some of the exhausted fog that's settled heavy over his brain. 

He sighs from the bottom of his chest and rubs his palm down the rippling muscle of Cable's arm, the metal blood-warm and smooth to the touch. He lingers over the spot he remembers seeing blood-red meat and twisting living metal, alive but not alive, testing the air towards Frank.

“Can't even tell,” he says wonderingly. “Jesus. I can't even tell it was gone.”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” says Cable. “But I’m good as new. Takes more than that to drop me, Frank.”

Frank keeps touching the seam where he remembers Cable’s arm being torn away, pushing his fingers into living metal, searching for something he knows isn't going to be there. Cable watches him silently, but he can't hide his pleased sigh when Frank strays up his shoulder, over his neck, pressing against the tender seam of flesh and metal and feeling the regular thump of Cable’s jugular under his fingertips. 

He thinks again of Cable's brief fantasy from before. The bed, the dark ocean, the fragile vines. He thinks of how Cable might manhandle him easily onto that bed, thinks about a hundred invisible hands petting him and holding him down, submitting to living green lashing ‘round him ‘til he's got no choice but to be still and be good. 

“ _DAD_.”

Cable groans in frustration, stepping back and rubbing a hand over his face. “One second,” he says to Frank, and leans into the hallway. “ _Indoor voice,_ ” he thunders. Then, in a more reasonable volume, “What?”

“Time for the next movie,” Hope calls out. “Am I still waiting for you or are you gonna keep making out back there?”

“By the Lady,” Cable mutters under his breath. “Frank and I are discussing work, honey.”

“That's not what Frank is thinking,” she sing-songs from in front of the tv. “Tell your boyfriend he's yell-liiiiiiing.”

“Then maybe you should stop eavesdropping,” mimics Cable back. “Sounds like someone needs to work on her shiiiii-eeeeeelds.”

He gives Frank a sheepish shrug. “Like I said,” he says. “Seventeen.”

Frank shrugs. He can't find the energy to be embarrassed; any lingering guilt about the things he desires, that perpetual millstone of Catholicism lashed to his neck, will always get broken by the immense gravity of being tired, full-stop. A pity, he thinks, that the rare time he's least likely to get tangled up in the weeds of revulsion at being touched always happens to be the times he's too fucking exhausted to get it up.

Cable is definitely still in his head listening to his thoughts ‘cause he laughs at that, a big peal of noise that fills the room for a bright moment. “Hold that thought,” he says. And, with a grimace, he nods towards the hallway. “She's just pushing your buttons.”

“S’alright,” he says, surprised that he actually means it. It _is_ alright. Cable has a kid. That’s alright. Cable is pleased that Frank has met her, and that’s alright too in a way that makes Frank’s guts lurch in a way that’s not entirely unpleasant.

In a perfect world he would’ve liked to be a hell of a lot more prepared to drop himself into Cable’s family life like this. More calm and rested, less arriving unannounced on the doorstep looking - and smelling - like a filthy stray dog. Made a better first impression on the kid, for one thing.

He pauses for a minute to examine that thought. Does he care about making a good impression? _Should_ he care? 

The churning roil of his guts tells him the answer. Yes, he should and yes, he does. 

A part of him, the mean little cold core pushing against his ribs, is hissing to get out. Bail as fast as possible, leave without ceremony. Can't have nice things in a war, it tells Frank. Can't have a soft bed, can't have tikka masala, can't allow Cable to gently smooth his thumb over the thinning hair at Frank's temple before steering him towards the cramped little en-suite, slinging Frank’s towel over his shoulder and telling him to come out and watch the movie with them once he’s cleaned up.

Cable is a liability. Having this stupid, meaningless affection for Cable, it’s always going to be a liability. Letting things, letting people back into his life… it's a mistake. It'll get him killed.

“--clothes are in the dresser,” Cable is saying. “Those grey sweats and your black hoodie, I think. You left them here from last time.”

His eye sparks bright and he steps into Frank's space, hand hovering over Frank's chest, silently asking for permission. 

“Yeah,” says Frank. “Jesus. Please.”

Cable touches his shoulders, his chest, lingering over the big ugly bruises on his ribs, circling the sloppily applied butterfly sutures on his shoulder, the wet-packed bandage on his flank that's starting to stink. Cable touches him with confidence, like Frank is a book he can read by memory. He squeezes his pecs and drags his fingertips through the thick hair on Frank's chest, down his belly until Frank is breathing heavy, watching Cable’s hands feel him up and map him out without fear or hesitation.

“Please,” Frank says helplessly, not even sure what he's asking for. 

Cable touches his belly, his chest, his shoulders, brushes his fingers over the pulse that's beating steady in Frank's throat, and leans down to kiss him. 

He keeps it gentle, sweet even, leaning back and tsk-ing when Frank tries to deepen the kiss, make it harder, dirtier; resorting to aggressiveness as a panacea to the secret part of Frank that wants Cable, desperately wants this domestic fantasy, wants to be wanted like a kicked dog wants a soft hand. 

Seeing Cable ripped up and bloody on the floor of that warehouse had shaken loose a piece of the foundations of Frank’s mile-high walls that he found himself unable - or, shamefully, unwilling - to mortar back in place. Love. Useless, fragile love. A liability at best, capable of bringing no benefit to his life. 

Common sense says dead men can't love. Common sense says there's no place for love in a state of total war. Common sense says that anyone Frank is weak enough to love is gonna get killed ‘cause that's just how it goes, a pattern unbreakable. 

Cable. Cable's daughter. Two more potential chalk marks on Frank's scoreboard when shit inevitably breaks bad, just ‘cause that's how things always go. 

Yet, selfishly, he loves and keeps loving because he's Frank Castle and he's a prize idiot who hasn’t got a lick of common sense when he's tired, and he's been so goddamn tired for years. 

Cable brushes his lips over Frank's temple and leans back to look at him, mismatched eyes searching his face. “You with me?”

He smothers those traitorous thoughts down and stores them away, nodding sharp once. Frank Castle loving someone is an ignominy that he can never drag into the light because, christ, he can't. Some things should never be admitted.

Cable kisses him again, then gives him a gentle push towards the bathroom. He pulls the towel off his broad shoulders and drops it in Frank's hands. “Wash,” he says. “Sleep if you want, or come out for movie night and Hope can make up for inhaling half your curry. But Frank, honestly, you smell like hell.”

Frank laughs weakly and clutches at his towel, the blue one with daisy print and a fraying edge, His towel, his clothes left in Cable's dresser, his toothbrush left in Cable's bathroom. “Yeah,” he says. “So I've been told.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey remember when Marvel briefly made a big deal about Hope eschewing mutant stuff and living with a foster family and attending a normal school before beginning the fast process of forgetting she exists entirely? Yeah.
> 
> I've previously written a story [in this vein](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20516993) which was more on the side of making a once off mention of Bable (baby Cable) but y'know, who cares about adhering the current state of canon? I prefer to merge the canonically horny properties of Krakoan island living with standard issue Big DILF Cable, to the enjoyment of basically no one but myself.
> 
> Tumblr: [@stryfeposting](http://stryfeposting.tumblr.com).


End file.
